[.ca] Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public ... (ISBN 0300070500)

how not to do things with words:
Language, as Mr. Rainey so skillfully demonstrates, can be pummelled and pressed into a characterless mush, with all the texture and taste of a soggy, uncooked soup noodle. In that sense, "Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture" is instantly recognizable as a new classic of absurdist literary history, a sort of inverted "Flowers for Algernon," in which the initial promise of intellectual thought gradually recedes to reveal a tragic and yawning imbecility. Mr. Rainey leads us, unerringly I believe, through the foggy crannies of a stark academic mind, a mind tortured by a dull torpor that lumbers off of every page and seeps into the reader's very pores. It's a brilliant exhibition of the dangers of the tenure process, and we can only applaud for Mr. Rainey for manifesting it with such exhaustive precision. "Institutions of Modernism" -- and this is where Mr. Rainey's argument is at its most persuasive -- is not just a book about reading. It is, as Mr. Rainey implicitly reiterates, a book about not reading. And this process of "not reading" is something that Mr. Rainey not only ceaselessly performs, but it is also a practice in which future readers of Mr. Rainey will undoubtedly wish to engage.

How did this book get in my series?:
There goes there neighborhood.

Great Book!:
TO characterize this treatise as soporific would be to devalue actual sleep, which any reader of this book- more of a phone book than a work of criticism- will experience in short order. This book makes narcoleptics of all of us: on the back cover should be a warning not to read it before operating heavy machinery, not to drive, etc. But Rainey doesn't just read modernist texts, he lists them. This book is what you would carry in your handback if you went grocery shopping for modernism late at night. Despite this fact, Rainey's prose remains remarkably listless. One hardly remembers finishing the previous sentence as one moves on to the next. I didn't know whether I was reading about Joyce or eating Chinese food. This book could do without punctuation- the book would then be shorter by 100 pages. But then again, those commas and periods are much needed- they are the generous pauses the author allows his reader,peaceful caesuras in which we are spared Rainey's unending siege. What a foul sleep this book puts us through. My advice is to put it aside: choose tranquility over Rainey's tranquilizer.

Great Book for Real!:
I couldn't put this book down. This is the BEST treatment of modernists in the marketplace that I've read. It was groundbreaking (a few years ago), darn eloquent, a great story.

Great Book for Driving!:
I'm an unusually short man (4'11"), so I find that "Institutions of Modernism" is the perfect book to sit on while I'm driving my car. I was using the phonebook for a while, but that was a hassle -- I mean, the phonebook actually has useful information it. But not this book, boy howdy. Thanks to Mr. Rainey, I can now view oncoming traffic.